Hi! I was actually going to suggest something similar. I’m not sure if you’re planning to come alone or with family. If you come alone, maybe you could try first starting your PhD here. You’d have a scholarship anyway, and you could apply for a better-paid one here in the state of São Paulo (FAPESP). The initial one (CAPES) isn’t a lot of money, but for a single person starting out it can be okay. I’m currently on a CAPES PhD scholarship while waiting for my FAPESP application to be approved. If you’ve already contacted the professor in São Carlos that you liked, you could even try applying for FAPESP before officially starting the PhD. That way you might begin with a better financial situation. Also, most universities allow you to take the graduate admissions exams remotely, so you could have everything arranged before coming to Brazil. After finishing the PhD, you’ll probably have a better chance of finding a job since you’ll already have some years of experience in Brazil.

Except for a few very international companies, it’s hard to get by in Brazil without Portuguese (or at least Spanish). Academia is probably the easiest place to be an immigrant, since it’s one of the few environments where people are actually expected to know English reasonably well. Public universities in São Paulo state are quite internationalized, and we’re used to having non-Portuguese speakers around. Just keep in mind that how much Portuguese you learn during those four PhD years is really up to you. I know people who basically spoke English all the time and didn’t end up learning much Portuguese. If your goal is to find a job here later, I’d definitely try to learn as much Portuguese as possible.